Do you consider beauty as a timeless universal like goodness and truth? Or are you suspicious of beauty? Or do you assume that beauty should be the goal of art?
Perhaps I have been too cynical, but I have always wanted to roll my eyes when I hear Christians saying things like, ‘Music should be beautiful because God is beautiful’, or ‘God’s beauty is revealed in beautiful music’, or ‘You should make beautiful art because God is beautiful’. It sounds like they think Christian musicians should only create music that sounds ‘nice’, or inoffensive, or tonal, and that somehow this reflects God better than music which pushes boundaries and makes one feel uncomfortable. The category of ‘beauty’ has been idolised by some musicians, relativised by others, and wielded as an ideological weapon by those who claim that their music is undeniably better than someone else’s.
With all that baggage, I was quite ready to ditch the concept of beauty until it was bluntly pointed out to me that the Bible does speak of beauty. So I decided to have a closer look at what it actually has to say on the topic with two big questions in mind: 1) Is beauty good? 2) Is God described as beautiful? This is not just an academic question: I believe deepening our understanding of beauty will help us to glorify God in our music making and our minds, and to love and worship Him more.
There are at least 20 different Greek and Hebrew words in the Bible which have been translated as ‘beauty’ or ‘beautiful’ in English, with a huge range of connotations. First we’ll look at some Hebrew words used in the Old Testament and consider how this might apply to our music making, before doing the same with the New Testament. (NB all Bible references in this article are from the NASB unless otherwise stated.)
Beauty in the Old Testament
Yophiy is a Hebrew word mostly used to talk about people looking beautiful, such as the lovers in Song of Songs:
How beautiful you are, my darling, How beautiful you are! Your eyes are like doves.
This sort of beauty is a good gift from God, yet sadly people can be tempted to trust in it and misuse it, as we see in these two verses from Ezekiel, speaking of God’s people Israel:
"Then your fame went forth among the nations on account of your beauty, for it was perfect because of My splendour which I bestowed on you," declares the Lord GOD. "But you trusted in your beauty and played the harlot because of your fame, and you poured out your harlotries on every passer-by who might be willing."
Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; You corrupted your wisdom by reason of your splendour.
The result of this corruption is terrible judgement during which God takes away the beauty He had bestowed.
Tsebiy, Tiph'raph', Hadar, and Hadarah, are connected to things being beautiful and splendid, having honour and glory. Like Yophiy, they are given by God as good gifts, but they aren’t always used well. In Isaiah we read how God’s people misuse the beauty God gave them instead of giving thanks to Him. God takes this beauty away in judgement but He also promises that He Himself will be like a ‘beautiful crown’ for the remnant of His people – that is, the people who are still His after the judgement has passed.[1]
Towb is another Hebrew word which is also used regarding people, but goes beyond describing their physical appearance as beautiful and also describes them being good, pleasing, joyful, beneficial, pleasant, favourable, happy and right.[2] It is used to describe Rebekah, Bathsheba, Esther and baby Moses.
No’am is the only Hebrew word used directly to describe God. It isn’t primarily talking about physical beauty, but about kindness, pleasantness, delightfulness, and favour.[3] It is the kindness of God which leads to peace and rest. We find it in the Psalms:
One thing I have asked from the LORD, that I shall seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD and to meditate in His temple.
The psalmist longs to see this beauty and linger there.
So what does that mean for our music?
God might give us music to play or enjoy that is beautiful in that it is splendid, attractive, or even glorious in the aesthetic or sensual sense. It might be described as Yophiy, Tsebiy, Tiph'raph', Hadar, or Hadarah. Maybe for you this is the gorgeous sonority of your instrument, the Tristan chord, a sweeping melody, pinging overtones, or a whole symphony or song. Enjoy it and give thanks to God who made and gave it! But also beware of how beauty can corrupt the heart and become idols, distracting us from trusting in God – just because something is beautiful doesn’t mean we always use it well.
Here are warnings to consider for our music making:
- Our human tendency is to trust in this beauty instead of the God who gave it – do we look for meaning, a sense of awe or a feeling of significance in this music instead of in God?
- God’s people became proud because of their beauty and that led to further sin – when do we become similarly proud?
- We might be making absolutely staggeringly beautiful music with other musicians, but we still need to trust in God and love Him more than the music or the people we are making it with. This includes keeping His moral standards instead of conforming to those around us.
Just like the people described in the Old Testament, we face judgement for being unfaithful to God. I have been shocked by how many verses mentioning beauty are in passages prophesying terrifying judgement, to which the only right response is to grieve and repent. How wonderful that these warnings of judgement are not without the promise of forgiveness and reconciliation. When we confess our unfaithfulness, we are forgiven in Jesus and we can know that we are one of His people, even part of the remnant of whom it is written (using Tsebiy):
The LORD of hosts will become a beautiful crown and a glorious diadem to the remnant of His people.
If the idea of loving God more than beautiful music sounds unreasonably dour and ugly then we need to remember what God is like. Remember No’am – the deep and profound beauty of God’s kindness and favour. He is the awesome creator who made all earth good and cares for all His creation. He is the jealous lover who sings over His beloved people. He is the kind Father who loves His children. He is the self-sacrificial redeemer who offer salvation to all people through Jesus’s death on the cross. He is the righteous judge who cannot stand the abuse and corruption on the earth and who will come and fix it. We will be satisfied, joyful, peaceful people for eternity when we love Him and trust in Him. That is much more beautiful than the euphoria of music now, and God is so much more worthy of our worship. Perhaps that is why Zion is described as the ‘perfection of beauty’ (Yophiy) – where God dwells with His people:
Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God has shone forth.
Beauty in the New Testament
Kalos is the main Greek word we translate as beauty in the New Testament. It combines being physically beautiful/handsome with being good, excellent, useful and fit for purpose.[4] This can describe objects (such as the stones of the temple in Luke 21:5) and deeds (such as the woman anointing Jesus’s feet in Mark 14:6). In the epistles it is most often used to describe ‘good works’.
Horaios is used much less and can be translated as blooming and beautiful.[5] The two key verses where it is used are:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.
How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!"
So what does this mean for our music?
- People can seem beautiful and sound beautiful but be ‘full of dead men’s bones’! We might have musical idols, or teachers who sound beautiful in what they play and say, or work with lovely community music practitioners who seem to have a beautiful outlook on life that is so loving and caring. Learn from and be inspired by these people, but remember that you are primarily a disciple of Jesus, not your teachers, mentors or favourite artists. Don’t be tempted to adopt someone’s worldview just because they sound beautiful – it is only Jesus who has the words of eternal life.
- Some music can be beautiful because it is fit for purpose; it is a good work done at the right time. The context matters. Once my husband Tom and I were playing live music on a palliative care ward in Charing Cross Hospital. Music which sounded beautiful when we were practising at home was not fitting at all; what was bittersweet elsewhere was suddenly horribly depressing or garish. We abandoned our set list and gently improvised around the ward, tailoring our notes to the individuals lying in their beds. There was probably little aesthetic beauty in the notes themselves, on a stage they would have sounded rather dull and derivative, but what the notes needed to do was to reach out to gently reach out to these dying patients. One man said 'sorry I'm in so much pain I couldn't concentrate the whole way through, but it was beautiful - thank you.' In a very different setting, it is easy to be snobby about 1980s worship music which some folks of a certain age at church keep insisting on playing. It might not be artistically beautiful, but it was completely fit for purpose in helping them celebrate, remember and proclaim the good news of Jesus in their youth and there is a beauty in that. It is beautiful to share the good, life-giving news of Jesus.
- The feet of those who bring good news are described as beautiful, originally by Isaiah who is then quoted by Paul who uses the word Horaios, that is beautiful in a blooming sense. A messenger running to bring good news in ancient Israel would have dirty, hot, sweaty feet, so we are not really talking about the sort of beauty that appeals to the senses, but rather the beauty of one who is bringing news of Christ’s salvation, news so amazingly longed for and desired that the hot, sweaty, dusty feet of the messenger are truly beautiful, like a plant blooming in season. I need to apply this to my view of evangelism before my music and stop being so cowardly about sharing the good news. But there is also music that shares the good news, and it might be music we find appealing to the senses or it might be music that we find pretty awful aesthetically. Don’t let musical snobbery blind you to the greater reality – the melody or musicians might seem dusty and sweaty to you but they are truly beautiful if they are bringing news of Christ’s salvation. Of course we can also work to make the notes beautiful in the fit-for-purpose, good and pleasing sense, but the messenger is already blooming beautiful.
- It is worth spending longer on the only passage in the Bible - Mark 14:3-9 - where we directly see Jesus describing something as beautiful:
While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.
Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.
“Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”
What characterises this beautiful act? It is costly, it is appealing to the senses, it is generous, it is disruptive, it is socially transgressive, it is sacrificial, it is worshipful, and perhaps most importantly it prepares Jesus’s body for burial – it honours Him and reveals something about His saving work. This is not a blueprint for our music making but it does explode my idea of what a beautiful act is and what it means to do beautifully. How many of those descriptions characterise our most beautiful music?
There are further fascinating examples of 'beauties' in the Bible in this appendix.
Back to the fundamentals
I’d like to conclude by returning to the two big questions we started with:
1. Is beauty good?
Some types of beauty are more connected to moral or inwards goodness than others: No’am also translates as kindness and favour, and Kalos also translates as good. Other types of beauty are more to do with appealing to the senses without necessarily implying godly goodness. This type of beauty is a good gift, but does not always remain linked to goodness as it can be used badly.
2. Is God described as beautiful?
God’s beauty is described as No’am, as kindness and favour.[6] Out of his kindness, God is also the giver, source and perfector of all beauties – the beauty of people, the splendour of kingdoms, the goodness of deeds. When God dwells with His people in Zion, it is described as ‘the perfection of beauties’ in a way that is also splendid.[7] How astonishing, then, that when God came to earth as a man, Jesus, He laid aside this splendid, impressive, visual sort of beauty. Isaiah prophesied that the Christ will have no beauty, using the word Mar’eh which is all to do with sight and appearance:
For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
Jesus laid aside visual beauty whilst demonstrating God’s beauty in His kindness and favour towards people. We see it in His turning water to wine, His feeding the crowds, His healing, and ultimately His death and resurrection so that all people might know God’s kindness and favour: His beauty. And when Jesus returns, He will surely be more splendid and glorious and beautiful than we can imagine.
So what does this mean for our music?
- No aesthetic scheme of beauty or sensual experience can claim to come close to the beauty of God. Praise Him!
- It is a good gift of God for things to be beautiful in the aesthetic or sensual sense. Like everything, this should be received with thanksgiving, not made into an idol. Again, praise Him!
A prayer
Our God, you are the source, creator, and sustainer of all beauty – thank you! We praise you! Thank you for the beauty of people and of music, but most of all for your beautiful kindness towards us.
We confess that we often misuse the good and beautiful gifts you have given us, particularly in our music making.
Sorry for when we worship music instead of you – thank you that you are so much greater and more wonderful; please open our eyes and hearts to that glorious reality.
Sorry for when we are proud – please help us to think more of you than of ourselves, and to remain in awe of you.
Sorry for when we care more about other musicians’ opinions than we do of yours - please help us to look to you alone for comfort, strength, guidance, and security.
Lord we repent of these things. Thank you Jesus that you laid aside your splendour and took the judgement that we deserve. Thank you that we can now live as your people and enjoy your beauty. Please help us to abide, rest and find joy in you, Lord Jesus.
Thank you Jesus for the beauty of your people bringing the good news of your salvation and how many do that through music or in song. Bless their work and please help us to also spread that news with joy.
Please help and inspire us to practise, produce, share, listen and make music in ways that are beautiful because they good, right and fitting for those around us.
Thank you Jesus that you are coming back. We long for when you dwell forever with your people in the perfection of beauty. We praise you!
Amen
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[1] Isaiah 28:3-5 (Tsebiy)
[2] Towb Hebrew Meaning - Old Testament Lexicon (NAS) (biblestudytools.com) accessed 8/6/23
[3] No`am Hebrew Meaning - Old Testament Lexicon (NAS) (biblestudytools.com) accessed 8/6/23
[4] Kalos Meaning - New Testament Greek Lexicon (KJV) (biblestudytools.com) accessed 8/6/23
[5] Horaios Meaning - New Testament Greek Lexicon (KJV) (biblestudytools.com) accessed 15/6/23
